If paradise be bought, it also be served with fries

  It had been a week sihe Office Job, though time was hard to gauge. The days in the Real felt less and less like they were being lived and more like they were dissolving directly into memory. His life iherworld rushed in to fill the gap. He spent most of it flying above the Allworld, letting his mind wander as the bizarre ndscape sped by, as it did now.

  He had felt ecstatic after the job. Looking back, it felt like he succeeded where the rest of the team failed, using instind quick thinking to turn a shitty situation into a win. Michael and the team didn’t agree. They gave what he did a name, freefalling, or trang or something, maybe each had given it a different ohey said it was dropping out aing the subscious of the spirit guide your entry into the Hardworlds. It rarely worked and wasn’t reliable. Essentially, he had gotten lucky, just as Philip had said. But it hadn’t felt like luck. Up until Paul dropped dead, he hadn’t really thought he could do it.

  Either way, he had to agree with them. Spending most of his time in a Hardworld believing he was about to get written up at some shitty job wasn’t the way he wao operate. He wahe freedom, the electrifying knowledge of who he was, and why he was there.

  He wanted, even more now that the first job was over, to be a real Hardworlder. It still felt like something just beyond his reach.

  Michael had promised him more training after they were doructuring the team aing up the job, but that had been days ago. He had started to worry, imagining sarios where he was hung out to dry, not part of the team but uo be let loose due to his knowledge of their identities, until Philip tacted him an ho.

  “Gonna pick you up today. Be ready.” His voice came through like a track phone, not the crystal clear ‘right in your thoughts’ way that Michael and the rest of the team sounded on the unicator.

  “When?”

  “Today.”

  He had dropped off the call, or e, or whatever the straelepathik could be called, and Gradie had left it at that. Whatever. It’s not like he o know a time anyway.

  All he ever did was fly.

  A red glow floating up from the Allworld caught his attention. Neoers the color ht hot heating elements. Ray’s. A memory, a few days old, bubbled up in him.

  Sometimes he did more than fly. His third day s around, just after zipping through the maker stalls and warehouse portals of the Allmall, but before finding the goons of Su, where e sued forever on the horizon, Ray’s had floated out from behind a tower of jungle bungalows and given Gradie his sed hard lesson about Otherworld advertising.

  Hunger was at least partially a fun of the Spirit. The sts and sights of the dreamworld meals were just as gut pulling as they were in the realm of flesh and blood. He had to focus on the fact that he had no stomad needed no food, or the slight hunger would devolve into brutal starvation cravings. It was written into the smells themselves by the makers somehow. The people of this pce really were a special kind of evil.

  Of course, Ray’s had floated out at him before he learhis lesson. He spent ten mem on the meal, (Michael’s promise to pay him only in experience must have been another kind of test), and the food had been amazing. The archetype of all burgers and a pile of te-night-ercial fries, with a chocote shake that kept its temperature, fvor, aure stant right to the st sip. Somehow, his Spirit remembered how to feel full, and the meal progressed from a desperate atta huo a leisurely observation on fvor, and ended as the familiar ritual of pig at the st fries and slurping loudly on an almost gone shake.

  Strangely, yet thankfully, his spirits grasp on digestion ehere. As he flew away from Ray’s, the feeling of fullness dropped away like a bad dream, and he was left just as un-hungry as he had been before the god damned diner had got in his way in the first pce.

  Now, here he was, once again flying towards it. The memory of that meal brought on the memory of the hunger, which of course brought on the huself.

  God dammit.

  He dropped down toward the door and the -around deck’s gravity stuck his shoes to the crete. No one floated in Ray’s. The makers had doheir best to make it feel as much like an ‘aw shucks, just good eatin’ diner floating in a dreamworld as possible. Even the sun, which Gradie never noticed flying around the Allworld normally, y on his fad coaxed up sweat from his ne a distinct summer way.

  He pulled the door open and the hot metal haung his hand. Ihe cold air smelled of AC, but mouthwatering beef fat and the sweet tang of ketchup and grilled onions pushed in at the edges. White noise versations echoed on the checkerboard tile floor. Spirits crowded into turquoise booths and fire-engiools. Fluoresd neon gred off road signs and other kits the walls. He stood in line like everyone else, w if this was as close to a Hardworld as any of these people ever got to.

  He paid at the ter. The cashier, a pouty freckled redhead in a low-cut apron, gyrated patiently as he brought up his wallet, slower thaher ers. The mem Michael had paid him in took the form of digital numbers in a clockface he could summon at will. He thought of the memories, childhood pleasures and visceral adult panics that were quantified and represented by the dull e digits. The stuff with which makers crafted all the oddities of this thoughtformed dimensiohey cutting up the old world and regrowing it piece by pie the new? What was the point?

  As he was eating outside on the deck, about halfway through his meal, just as frustratingly fantastic as st time, something strange, even for a dreamworld diner, caught his attention.

  A man in pajamas, royal blue pants and shirt, with silver star and moon motifs, nded betweeables with his arms folded behind his back.

  “Oh brothers and sisters, if you only khe glory of the Spirit, you would throw the dust in your hands away in an instant!”

  Someone ughed. “Oh shit, it’s one of those guys.”

  Everyone else had about the same rea. The man sed the faces with pt, until he saw Gradie, who, having never seen anything besides urained pursuit of satisfa iherworld, was watg him with too muterest.

  Fuck. The guy locked eyes and walked over, waving his hands and preag and shit.

  “The Spirit must learruth! That it is no longer fio its shell!” Here he swept his hand at Gradie’s burger, fries, and (this time, cookies and cream!) shake.

  “Each time you give in to the phantom song of the flesh, you bind your Spirit to it ever more strongly! ed to your false form, you will never learn the great pleasures of existing as pure Spirit, without need or want or pain!”

  Here, he broke eye tact with Gradie and looked at something towards the front door.

  “And more doomed still, are those who go to those so called hard worlds. Truly, the nd of the dead!”

  Gradie froze, then remembering the man wasn’t even looking at him, rexed and followed his gaze.

  A man in a bright red smoker’s jacket and a mask made of neon-green psma walked away from the ter with a half-gallon root beer float foaming in a frosted mug. The two women on his arms, ea dresses like colored pstic , ate Tom-and-Jerry-sized ice cream sundaes suggestively and fought for his eye tact.

  “I am the nd of the dead, baby!” the man yelled, and raised his float in the air, spraying the girls with dark soda and golden foam. They ughed and pressed against him. He looked like something out of Michael’s vision. Gradie tried to imagine Philip or Luke wasting mem irls and too-perfect fast food. He couldn’t even picture them ihe diner.

  The pajama man piped up again, louder.

  “Seek the Spirit! Seek the edge! The abyss! Only there will you find yourself!” Gradie looked back to see pajama man staring him down again. Before he could decide how to respond (taking another bite of the burger was in the lead) a big guy in a greasy apron stepped out of nowhere and kicked the man iomach. Pajama ma flying out into the glittering swarm and the guy in the apron wiped his hands together dramatically and wagged a fi the empty air.

  “And stay out!”

  The died in ughter and appuse. The apron man pushed through a swinging pair of kit double doors and disappeared with them.

  The stra dissolved into the atmosphere of the diner, which tinued uerred, front door dinging open and orders being called and all that, and befradie got another bite down, it was like he had dreamed it.

  As he picked at the st fries and wondered if there was a way to put some kind of tracker on Ray’s, (He had bought a responsive map from a floating stall, the seller pig him out of a swarm as a newborn. He had set it to pop up when he made a right ah his thumb and index finger) Philip called him on the unicator.

  The early 00’s Nokia-style ring tone was a wele ge from the gentle dream knowledge prodding that usually let him know a team member was trying to talk to him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Training day, kid. Don’t make me wait.”

  “I’m at Ray’s.”

  “I don’t give a— That fug pce?”

  “Yeah. Do you know if there’s a way to see where it—”

  “Finish your chili dog a me in the bck.”

  “Where?”

  “Just fp those little wings and head straight up. I’ll find you.”

  The dial tone was almost pleasant pared to the sudden-absence-of-another-presen-my-head that ended most versations on the line. Gradie stood up and dusted crumbs off his cloak and kicked off into the air.

  Would you seek the Spirit at the edge of the void? Or would you see what the burning core of the Otherworld had to offer you? ime, we get a glimpse of how Philip moves around the Otherworld (besides relutly). episode: Philip's